Beneath the Veil
by Adia Adore
Summary: Sirius dies. Nebulousness ensues. Some inferred everything.


Another drabble.

Title: Beneath the Veil  
Author: AdiaAdore  
Genre: Drama/Angst  
Pairing: Sirius, some surprises, and a whole host of regret.  
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: Whoops, didn't create him.  
Summary: Sirius dies. Nebulousness ensues.  
  
  
  
Sirius is possessed at once. He knows this because there is no longer feeling in his legs, then his arms. Finally, his chest. He vaguely finds this odd, as this is where he is first struck, and it remains the last place where any tingling lingers.  
  
Then it is replaced by spirit and shadow. He has fallen, he finds, as he has become enveloped in soft folds of darkness, whispers encircling a great void of coming and going, a nebulous echo of life. He remains splayed in the nothing, his limbs outstretched upon a place he cannot identify. He does not feel compelled sit up. It is warm. He is helpless, and helped. There is sufficiency for the time being, as he wonders when he will begin to think again, and reason. And see.  
  
There is no sight. There is no anything. He is dead, he finds. He satisfactorially _isn't._  
  
Oh, he thinks hollowly. The realization hits him like a blanket; he does not suffocate beneath it until it has covered the entirety of his face and self. In vain, he struggles under his invisible bindings, but finds that the insides of him have been replaced with a non-life, a non-existance. Merely spirit and echo and shadow.   
  
He is dead. He is possessed by darkness.  
  
And then Sirius finds he is floating. Beyond his control, he is lifted and treated to a flash of photos that are hodgepodge of his life, a scrapbook from a beloved vacation. They lurk in front of him, almost material but mostly dark, and distant. But he can recognize their features in any place and weakly tries to reach out to them as they slip away in a whirlpool of lingering light.   
  
One is quick, and darts in front of the folds like fish in murky water, confused and frightened and fighting for something Sirius cannot comphrehend in his eternal abandon. He reaches out instinctively with his fingers, trying to flesh out the figure in what is left of his mind, almost hearing a voice but content to trace this moment. Follows as it glides quickly and anxiously. And then hurriedly away.  
  
_Harry._ He mouths blandly, closing his fist around nothing. He wants to wave goodbye, but then feels stupid with the absurdity. He feels as though he should weep, but finds that he no longer knows how. He is floating, still, caught in the thick of what is swiftly sweeping him away, when both his arms reach out for salvation.  
  
A figure commands the space now, possessed of itself an assurance that Sirius knows of few. A slow series of swishes, and the figure vanishes and reappears, but to Sirius this looks normal, the haze of shadows retaining little likeness to reality. He suddenly feels trapped at the sight, and fights his bindings in a struggle that lifts him further away from Harry, from Dumbledore and Bellatrix and life and battle and redemption and pain and condemnation and revenge and hiding and virtue.  
  
What is left of a gasp escapes him as he strains. And Moony, he thinks. And Moony. And Moony. And Moony.  
  
The last of his sense switches to panic. The figure left, almost completely still admist the fluidity of shadows, is mourning the emptiness that he finds before him. Composed, Sirius thinks in a flash. As composed as he'll ever be. Sirius struggles in vain and tries to scream from the contempt; he finds his breath only ripples within the air, bleeding from him like a open wound. If only, he thinks thickly, the thoughts now slurring together with his surroundings, the echo in his brain is taken off mute and pounds inside and around him. If only he can get to him. He can leave. He can live.  
  
His brain switches out of English. What he feels and sees are now words, seething thickly from him. He is drowning in his demise.  
  
He stops struggling. The figure remains etched in shadow, but Sirius is quickly slipping away. He drops the pretense of strength and watches vaguely, almost blindly now, as love falls away from him like a empty dream.  
  
He is not dreaming. But he is not awake. He is going somewhere, and does not know how to face forward. The veil is vanishing towards an invisible horizon, and he is traveling faster then he can comphrehend, the empty air rustling around him.  
  
He has not been trained to handle this moment. In all his life, his courage has led him to believe that this is what he is fighting against, not heading towards. Now his life lessons have been voided and he is careening in the thickness of his eternity. If it is eternity. If it is anything at all.  
  
Sirius becomes everything. Sirius exisits in omnipotence for a moment, before he is nothing again, still in the shadow. He closes what is left of his eyes in futility, finding that the dark remains in all places the same.  
  
And then. Warmth. Sirius jolts from the surprise and finds that he can, moves within his state, opens his eyes to what is behind him. What he finds, he cannot express.  
  
There. In the haze of the murky light, existing and murmuring in song, the words that are not words becoming more distinguishable, the language of everything and the dead welcoming him, suffocating him in open arms.  
  
It is James. James is existing, a haze of love, and good, and of this place. He is smiling, Sirius can see now. The whole world is smiling. His whole world is smiling. Suddenly, the pall of darkness is lifting, and the shadow is an echo of light, the words stringing together the answer to fear.  
  
And then, the destination completes him. He is fullfilled within the emptiness, a hole mended in a place he did not recognize before.  
  
In an end where he trades his loves for others, the hard and soft warmths for mere echos and shadow. Waifs that are as akin to him as anything, their contruction one and the same.  
  
Of which he has become. Of what he has always been, beneath his surface; what he has always contained, now what he cannot help but embrace, what is left of his cheeks and his arms finding themselves entwined in his welcomer.  
  
He asks without asking, to be led on.


End file.
